Latest revision as of 20:13, February 28, 2014

Funtoo Linux Optimization Proposal: Ebuild Ecosystem

This FLOP describes new wiki-based infrastructure to allow users to identify ebuilds that are important to them, and collect docs for these ebuilds.

Overview

In late 2013, I announced that Funtoo would become a completely user-focused distribution. For this to happen, we need a mechanism to capture the desires of our user community, and an obvious area of focus is to find out what ebuilds users are using and care about.

Infrastructure

To implement this, the following infrastructure will be developed:

Used Ebuilds

Users will have a mechanism, via editing their user profile, to specify ebuilds that they use. They will be able to specify the cat/pkg name, USE flags they care about, and also specify specific features that they use in the ebuilds in a "Notes" field. They will also be able to specify the usage scenario for the ebuild, which will initially allow users to select "Desktop" or "Server".

Ebuild Namespace

The wiki already has a separate namespace for ebuilds. Used ebuilds will link to pages in this namespace, allowing official Ebuild pages to be created. These pages will serve as a hub for organizing information related to these ebuilds. In particular, these pages will provide the official location for:

Extended documentation related to the ebuild

Usage information

Developer documentation

Testing steps for new versions of the ebuild

Wiki-Based Package Sets

Once ebuilds begin to be defined on the wiki, they will be collected into various package sets. These package sets will be maintained and used as the basis for a binary version of Funtoo Linux.

Conclusion

This infrastructure will allow Funtoo to truly focus on user needs by creating the necessary infrastructure for capturing ebuild information from users.